SORITES (ΣΩΡΙΤΗΣ), ISSN 1135-1349 http://www.sorites.org Issue #15 — December 2004. Pp. 29-41 Ontic Vagueness in Microphysics Copyright © by SORITES and Silvio Seno Chibeni ONTIC VAGUENESS IN MICROPHYSICS Silvio Seno Chibeni The farther physical science progresses the less can it dispense with philosophical criticism. But at the same time philosophers are increasingly obliged to become intimately acquainted with the sphere of research, to which they undertake to prescribe the governing laws of knowledge. E. Schrödinger (1957, 51) 1. Introduction It is difficult, if not impossible to characterize vagueness without prejudging the issue in favour of one or another of the main interpretations of vagueness. Perhaps the central element in the notion is the existence of a fuzzy boundary. 1 Thus, defenders of the linguistic interpretation say that a term is vague when its meaning is not precise, whereas proponents of the epistemic interpretation hold that vagueness results from lack of precise knowledge. Those, on the other hand, who defend ontic or metaphysical vagueness usually take a vague object as an object whose physical properties are blurred or indeterminate. Another way of expressing this point is to say that a vague object is an object whose properties are not — as a matter of fact — all precisely specifiable or definable. It is not that we are uncertain whether the property applies to the object (this would be epistemic vagueness), but that there is objectively «no determinate fact of the matter whether that object exemplifies that property.» 2 Much of the voluminous literature on vagueness is devoted to the question of whether there is, or there can be, vagueness in the world itself, as contrasted with its representation in thought or language. The current disinclination of students to answer these questions positively appears to derive from two main sources. There is, first, the weight of the classical analyses of the issue. As is well known, Frege regarded vagueness as a defect of ordinary language. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why he and virtually all the early analytic philosophers concentrated their attention to artificial languages. 3 Also, in his seminal 1923 article on vagueness, Bertrand Russell maintained that «Vagueness and precision alike are characteristics 1 Vagueness is also commonly characterized in terms of borderline cases. Here we shall focus on fuzzy boundaries, because the existence of borderline cases follows from the existence of fuzzy boundaries, whereas the converse does not seem to hold (see Keefe and Smith 1997, 15-16). 2 Merricks (2001, 145). This paper offers particularly clear characterizations of the three main views of vagueness. For a more specific attempt to define ontic vagueness, see Sainsbury (1989). 3 For an account of Frege’s views on vagueness, see Williamson (1994, sect. 2.2).